The hands-on approach is enabled by SEAS’ recent investment in student laboratory space. ES50 will double its lab space in the basement of Maxwell Dworkin this coming spring, a much-needed expansion that will facilitate more creative, unscripted design opportunities for students.
Building an intellectual community for students is another important goal for which CS50 has set the pace.
Concentrations are trying hard to foster discussion and camaraderie among students through a variety of initiatives—from workshops, seminars, and stronger undergraduate engineering societies to Friday pizza lunches for engineering enthusiasts in Pierce Hall and weekly cake and ice cream hours for applied math concentrators.
Although not as robust as their CS50 counterpart, the AM50 Fair and ES50 Fair also encourage students to share and discuss ideas.
FINDING WHAT WORKS
But incorporating some ideas means letting go of others. AM50, for example, will most likely forgo CS50-like growth in favor of a more intimate class environment targeted at freshmen and sophomores. Student presentations were a central aspect of AM50’s initial course structure but have since been sidelined by unexpected growth, and the class will most likely limit enrollment to between 30 and 60—with limited spots available to upperclassmen—next spring, according to AM50 professor and SEAS Assistant Dean for Academic Programs Marie D. Dahleh.
“It’s been difficult to address the needs of all the students in the course,” she says, explaining that AM50 will provide a more structured focus on fundamental skill sets.
Lecturer Mauricio Santillana, who will teach AM50 with Dahleh next spring, adds that aiming for a class size on par with CS50 would require an ambitious increase in teaching staff and resources.
And some students also say that a large class does not necessarily translate to an optimum classroom experience.
“I think I prefer ES50 simply because the class was much smaller and the professor was super approachable if you didn’t understand anything,” says Pin-Wen Wang ’14. “Just because of the sheer size of [CS50], it’s more likely that you have a good relationship with your TF.”
Other students enjoy the unique laboratory components that computers cannot provide.
Justine F. Hasson ’14 describes the “amazing” feeling of getting her ES1 project—a flashlight—to finally work after weeks of designing and working on the electrical components.
“Fundamentally, I’d rather be building things by hand or making things that I can touch,” says Hawkes, the former ES50 teaching fellow.
“In CS, you could spend hours and hours and hours hunting for one misplaced semicolon in your code and, when you got it working, it was an incredible feeling,” she says. “But I just preferred building things in ES50 as opposed to hunting for semicolons.”
—Staff writer Akua F. Abu can be reached at aabu@college.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Radhika Jain can be reached at radhikajain@college.harvard.edu.